Page:The Stratford gallery.djvu/24

12 King of Scotland; thus bringing to pass the witches' words, and realizing his wife's inordinate aspirations.

And now Macbeth remembered, how it had been promised to Banquo that his issue should succeed to the throne; and this thought so rankled in the minds of the guilty pair, that they determined to put to death Banquo and his son, to secure to their own posterity the honors for which they had paid so dearly. Accordingly Banquo was murdered by hired assassins, on his return from a grand feast given by his friend, King Macbeth; but his son Fleance escaped into a neighboring country; and from him eventually descended a long line of Scottish monarchs.

Thus, from one desperate crime to another the wretched Mug was impelled, by morbid fear of conspirators against his dignity or his life, till the people, exasperated, took violent measures to free themselves from his tyranny. Lady Macbeth died, an unpitied victim to "a mind diseased;" and her husband was killed in personal encounter with Macduff, a Scottish nobleman, whose wife and children had been inhumanly butchered by the usurper's order. Malcolm, the lawful successor of Duncan the Meek, was raised to the throne.

This is one of the many plays of Shakspeare in which the superstitious element constitutes a distinguishing feature; its supernatural effects are neither childish nor commonplace; they contribute in no small degree to the depicting of a terrible retribution, and are imbued with all the weirdness of the Black Art, in the days when the wisest believed in, and the boldest trembled before, its revelations.

Of all the Shakespearian Sisterhood, there is perhaps least